12 Children Who Changed the World

April 1, 2016
Grades 4-7 The smiling face of Malala Yousafzai on the front of this entry in the Change Makers series leads readers into an introduction of 12 remarkable young people, from Anne Frank to Ruby Bridges, Joan of Arc to Mozart, as well as lesser-known names, like Samantha Smith, who wrote a plea for peace to a Russian leader, and Ryan White, who put a young face on AIDS early in the epidemic. Each subject gets an illustrated, two-page spread with the facts of their lives given in digestible bites. Occasionally, details get lostlittle things, like mentioning at the outset that Ruby Bridges was an American child. The text, simply written, still manages to capture the importance of its subjects and the power of their stories. A final spread gives suggestions for how you can make a change. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)